31 October 2012

In South Africa, in 2012, “Patriarchy” theory is orthodox.
It is politically correct, and government ministers and trade union leaders
feel free to denounce patriarchy without fear of contradiction.

Patriarchy doctrine says that men have an innate prejudice
against women that causes them to treat women badly. This contradicts the other
principal orthodoxy related to women, which is Gender theory.

To say that men have an innate prejudice is to attribute to
men a characteristic that is not biological. Hence, patriarchy doctrine is
prejudice. It is gender bias. Patriarchy doctrine is sexism.

Lindsey German is a renowned leader of the peace movement in
Britain. She is the convenor of the Stop
the War Coalition, an alliance that involves the Communist Party of Britain
as well as Lindsey German’s former organisation (she has now resigned from it),
the Socialist Workers’ Party.

Lindsey German rejected the theory of patriarchy more than
30 years ago.

The article attached and linked below is from 1981 but it is
not out of date. It will not offend all supporters of patriarchy-theory,
because, as German points out, there are many different definitions of the
word. But it will upset some, if they read it.

German focuses on the kind of patriarchy-theory that holds
that all men benefit from the oppression of all women, where this is taken as a
natural, or given, state of affairs.

Lindsey German sets quotations from Karl Marx against these
ideas to show that they are not compatible with history.

She shows how the modern conditions of women were not
inevitable but arose in the circumstances of capitalism.

“I would argue
therefore that not only do men not benefit from women’s work in the family
(rather the capitalist system as a whole benefits), but also that it is not
true that men and capital are conspiring to stop women having access to
economic production,” says German.

“The question the
theorists of patriarchy have to answer is this – if capital and men are indeed
in alliance why are women not being thrown out of work and replaced by
unemployed miners, steelworkers and dockers?” asks German.

German concludes... : “Theories
of patriarchy are not in fact theories of women’s liberation. Instead of
starting with an assessment of the material position of women in capitalist
society, they start with crude biological assessments of the positions of men
and women. They point no way forward for women’s liberation.”

...and asks: “Why then
have they become so popular?”

She points out that patriarchy-theory “demands theoretical correctness from the few while accepting inaction
by the many.” This is exactly the situation in South Africa today, more
than 30 years after German wrote her essay.

In the end, only the abolition of class division can do away
with the oppression of and discrimination against women.

Those women who would rather not think about class, are the
ones who make patriarchy-theory popular.

28 October 2012

This is about the little book with the red plastic cover,
which is not central to this course. But it is part of the history of ideas. According to Wikipedia, it
was published in a total printing of 1,055,498,000 copies, in many different
languages.

That’s more than a billion.

Chapter 31 is on Women. Among other things it says:

“Unite and take part
in production and political activity to improve the economic and political
status of women.”

None of Mao’s statements are “gendered”.

Mao correctly places the question of male authority within a
class and economic (political economy) context.

Mao’s form of propaganda is reminiscent of the kind that
Clara Zetkin advocated: Well-produced, but short, and capable of being read by
everybody.

26 October 2012

Any differences that are attributed to men or to women that
are not biological are called “Gender”.

Discrimination between people on grounds of gender is wrong.

Opposition to gender-discrimination is not the entirety of
women’s concerns. Opposition to gender-discrimination is a “human rights”
matter that may be dealt with by law.

Women’s concerns as women go beyond opposition to
gender-discrimination. Women should organise as women so as to become a
free-willing collective subject that can act positively, and so do more than merely
restore prescribed human rights.

Women organised democratically as women, and especially as
working women, can be a revolutionary force. It is this revolutionary force of
women that the communists need to bring into being.

The establishment of “gender desks” is not sufficient for
revolutionary purposes. “Gender desks” can partially, but not completely,
restore equal (bourgeois) rights to bourgeois women, but will not succeed in
the task of mobilising proletarian women for the overthrow of capitalism, which
is the only full emancipation available to them.

21 October 2012

In relation
to the previous text we asked: Is the Progressive Women’s Movement (PWM)
supposed to be a subsidiary of the ANC Women’s League, and therefore a junior
partner of the ANC? Or is the PWM a wider movement, open to all women, of which
the ANCWL is only one part among many? To what extent have the problems and
tensions of the FEDSAW period in the 1950s been solved? Or, have those problems
not been solved?

The linked download is one document compiled of three
documents. They are the PWM Base Document, the PWM Founding Document, and the
PWM Declaration of 8 August 2006, from the founding gathering in Mangaung. All
three documents were previously downloaded by the CU from a PWM page at the ANCWL web site,
where the PWM logo, rather similar to that of the ANCWL, was displayed.

There was, in 2011, a separate PWM web site, at http://pwmsa.org/.
On this new PWM web site, it says, among other things:

“The Progressive
Women's Movement of South Africa (PWMSA) is a Not-for­Profit Organisation
registration number 051-728-NPO, launched in Bloemfontein on the 8th August
2006 to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the 1956 march of 20 000 South
African Women to the Union Buildings to protest against apartheid.

“After extensive
discussions, as the ANCWL and Alliance partners we have agreed that a Women's
Movement is a broad front of women's organisations, grassroots organisations of
all kinds, feminist oriented groups, researchers, faith based organisations,
traditional healers, women involved in policy formulation and programmes.

“The Movement was
launched to create a broad front for development for the women of South Africa
-one that would enable women to speak with one voice to address their concerns
using a single platform of action irrespective of race, class, religion,
political and social standing.

“To date, membership
of the movement comprises more than thirty-five national organisations and
institutions that represent civil society, labour, faith-based, political
parties, business, arts and culture and professional bodies, non-governmental
organisations, political parties, professional bodies and faith based
organisations.”

A search of
the new site did not reveal the list of the “more than thirty-five national
organisations”. Perhaps this vital information will be coming later.

In a
previous edition of this course “No Woman, No Revolution”, which has been run a
number of times by the Communist University since 2006, we noted that on
Thursday, 20 August 2009, the Progressive Women’s Movement’s third-anniversary
banquet was featured on the SABC glamour-and-fashion programme, Top Billing. It
was a high-society occasion. The President of the Republic was a guest. Our picture is of Jacob Zuma being interviewed by
Top Billing during that PWM banquet. We noted that it was not clear who
was the leader of the PWM on that occasion.

Now, on the new web site, the names of the Working Committee
are given, and a physical address is given at 77 Fox Street, Johannesburg, with other contact details.

“The ANC
and the ANC WL… have held a view that there is a need for some kind of an
organic structure that will take up broader issues of women in the South
African Society.

“In
October 2005 during one of its meetings the National Executive Committee of the
Women's League decided it would be ideal if South African women to formalize a
Progressive Women's Movement in 2006.

“After
extensive discussions, as the ANCWL and Alliance partners we have agreed that a
Women's Movement is a broad front of women's organisations, grassroots
organisations of all kinds, feminist oriented groups, researchers, faith based
organisations, traditional healers, women involved in policy formulation and
programmes.

“Character of
the PWM: Organic - not a formal structure.

“Objectives:
Unite the women of South Africa in diversity; strengthen the
relationship between the government and women's organisations.”

The Base
Document therefore confirms that the PWM is an ANC initiative, that it is a
combination of women’s organisations, not individuals, that it shall be
“organic” and “not a formal structure”, and that it its purpose is to bind the
women to the government.

“Regular
membership of the movement shall be open to any progressive South African
women's organisation and formations that work with women that share the values
and principles of the PWMSA.

“National Steering Committee, Selection and Tenure:
National Conference shall identify sectors for representation to the steering
committee. After the Conference of the PWMSA the previous committee in
conjunction with the newly seconded members will convene a handing over meeting
within a period of a month.”

[Steering Committee members are “identified” and “seconded”.
This formula is repeated at Provincial level. The word “elect”, or “election”,
is never used. Terms are five years (National) and three years (Provincial).]

“Powers
and Duties of the National Steering Committee: The Steering Committee shall
elect a Convenor and assign portfolios and responsibilities to
the members of the Steering Committee; They shall carry out and monitor the
decisions of the National Conference; They shall coordinate the establishment
of Provincial Steering Committees”

“Committees:
There shall be such other Committee(s) and ad hoc committees, as the Steering
Committee may from time to time deem necessary; Each Committee shall have
a Coordinator.

“At any National Conference the only
business that shall be discussed shall be that which has been specified in the
written request lodged by the members concerned, unless the Steering Committee
in her discretion otherwise permits.

“The Steering Committee shall have the
power to authorise expenditure on behalf of the Movement from time to time for
the purposes of furthering the objectives of the Movement in accordance with
such terms and conditions as the Member Organisation of the Steering Committee
may direct. The monies of the Movement shall be deposited and disbursed in
accordance with any Banking Resolution passed by the Steering Committee. Each
member shall, on an annual basis pay dues for every five years.”

It appears that in order to be “organic and not a formal structure”,
the PWM was to be at least as tightly structured as a normal, constitutionally
organised democratic body. The requirement to be “not a formal structure” is only attempted in
this very formal document to the extent that although there is a Convenor and
there are Co-ordinators, there are no Presidents, Chairpersons or Secretaries;
that the basis of delegate status at conferences is not spelled out; and that
there is selection, and secondment, but there are no elections.

Like FEDSAW in the 1950s, the PWM is not allowed to have a
mass individual membership. It only has corporate members. Who they all are, is
not yet public information.

There is a desire in some women, and men, to flee from the mass-democratic
organisational forms that are normal to the labour movement, of the kind that
were championed by other women like the late, great Ray Alexander, for example. The desire
to shun such democratic forms of mass organisation has a basis in the
conflicted philosophy of feminism. It is related to the contradiction noted
by Alexandra Kollontai a century ago, between
bourgeois feminism, and working-class politics.

20 October 2012

In the history of women’s organisations in South Africa there have
been many attempts to create enduring structures. The table below, compiled
from searches on the Internet, lists some 15 of the principal ones.

Another source is a book. Twenty-four years after Cheryl Walker’s 1982
book “Women and Resistance in South Africa”, Shireen Hassim in 2006 produced
“Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority”,
published by University of Wisconsin Press. Useful parts of this book can be
read through Google Books.

Hassim’s book contains a lot of detail on the way that these and other
women’s organisations came about, who was involved, and those relationships and
problems that motivated their formation, and those that led to their demise.

FEDTRAW
Calendar, 1987

Hassim notes that Walker’s book was well known to important actors
during the UDF period, when problems arose that were similar to those that
Walker described as existing between the FSAW and the ANC Women’s League in the
1950s.

The table lists six different organisations that were formed between 1981
and 1991, not including the FSAW (Fedsaw), which was also the subject of an
attempted revival. These seven attempts, which were not the only ones,
corresponded in time with the rise and fall of the United Democratic Front, the
UDF.

In addition, the ANC and the SACP were legalised in February, 1990,
and the ANC Women’s League was quick to return to the country and to
re-establish itself.

Of all these, total eight, organisations, established or
re-established in the country between 1981 and 1991, the only one that survives
in 2012 is the ANC Women’s League. None of the others survived beyond the early
1990s.

Year

Organisation

Leaders

1918

Bantu Women's League(BWL)

Founded
by Charlotte Maxeke

1933

National Council of African
Women (NCAW)

First
President: Charlotte Maxeke

1943

The
ANC officially admits women
members

President,
A B Xuma

1948

ANC Women's League (ANCWL)

Ida
Mtwana, President

1954

Federation of South African
Women (FSAW)

Ray
Alexander, Dora Tamana, Josie Mphama

1955

Black Sash (Women's Defence of the
Constitution League)

Jean
Sinclair, Ruth Foley and others

1975

Black Women's Federation

Fatima
Meer, Winnie Mandela

1981

The United Women's
Organisation (UWO)

Dora
Tamana, Mildred Lesia, Amy Thornton

1983

Natal Organisation of Women
(NOW)

Phumzile
Mlambo, Nozizwe Madlala, Victoria Mxenge

1984

Federation of Transvaal Women
(FEDTRAW)

Sister
Bernard Ncube, Jessie Duarte

1986

United Women's Congress
(UWCO)

From
UWO

1987

Federation of South African
Women (Fedsaw) re-launch

Cheryl
Carolus, Secretary-General

1987

The
UDF Women’s Congress

Frances
Baard

1991

Women's National Coalition
(WNCSA)

Frene
Ginwala, Anne Letsepe, convenors

2006

Progressive Women’s
Movement (PWMSA)

Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka, Mummy Japhta

The organisation that the attached and linked document relates to is
the “Women’s National Coalition”. It
was a vehicle for intervention in the CODESA talks and for the creation of a
set of demands or suggestions that were used to lobby the ANC prior to the 1994
elections, and then after the elections, as an input to the
Constitution-writing process that followed.

The creation of the Women’s National Coalition was driven by Frene
Ginwala, who became Speaker of Parliament after the elections, and later by the
academic Sheila Meintjes. The structure was more like an NGO (funded from
Canada) than a democracy, and the method of collecting a mandate, described in
the document as “focus groups”, was a difficulty and a source of acrimonious
internal strife, according to Hassim.

The document includes a description found on the Internet, and the
Women’s National Coalition’s “Women's Charter for Effective Equality”, taken
from the ANC web site. As noted in the document, there is no reference to the original
Women’s Charter of 1954, or to the Federation of South African Women that
created it, and which organised the women’s march to the Union Buildings in
Pretoria on the 9th of August 1956. This conspicuous omission has
continued.

In between the mid-1990s when the Women’s National Coalition faded, and
2006, there was no claimant to the status of a national South African women’s
organisation. In 2006 the Progressive
Women’s Movement was launched, claiming to fulfil the requirement. Whether it
does so, or not, is the matter that is set out for examination in the next item
of this part of the course.

19 October 2012

“[The
ANC’s] main fear was that, if the FSAW were constituted on the basis of an
individual membership, it would compete against the ANCWL to the detriment of
the latter. In taking this position, the ANC revealed a degree of ambivalence
towards the FSAW that it would never entirely overcome.”

With these
words of Cheryl Walker’s, we left the
matter of the Federation of South African Women (FSAW or FEDSAW). Now we look
at the ANC and its Women’s League, founded in 1948. Women had been admitted to
ANC membership for the first time five years earlier, in 1943.

The Short
History of the ANCWL on its web site recalls the formation of FEDSAW as
the major turning point for the League:

“Organisationally,
the Federation of South African Women, formed in 1954 as an umbrella body,
helped the ANCWL's activities to spread. It was the first indication that the
ANCWL wanted to be involved in improving the lot of women nationally, and not
only within their own organisation. Federation brought together [women] from
the ANCWL, Coloured People's Organisation, Transvaal and Natal Indian
Congress of Democrats.

From the
writer’s point of view, the ANC Women’s League’s sense of ownership, verging on
entitlement of monopoly, is benign and not problematic. The formation of FEDSAW
was a stepping-stone, and FEDSAW’s disappearance was not a problem, if the ANC
WL’s rise was a consequence of FEDSAW’s demise, according to this view.

“The
impact of women's activities led the male leadership to recognise the potential
of the women's struggle. Thus started the integration of women into ANC
structures. In 1956 ANCWL President Lilian Ngoyi was elected the first women to
join the ANC NEC.”

Lilian
Ngoyi was President of both the League and the Federation at that time.

Women had
been members of the ANC since 1943. Now, the male leadership “recognised the
potential of the women's struggle,” but for what? Did it recognise the
potential of FEDSAW to organise something that could be as powerful as the ANC
but independent from the ANC? And did they therefore seek to subordinate FEDSAW
to the ANC, thereby killing FEDSAW?

Or, did it
recognise and exploit the potential of women as a conservative force within the
ANC?

Or, did it
recognise women as a revolutionary force, and if so, what did the ANC do to
maximise the revolutionary potential of the women?

See the
document linked below for more of this history, and for relevant points from
the current (2003) ANCWL constitution. Here are some of them:

The Women's League is based on
the policies and principles of the African National Congress.

[Members must] Combat
propaganda detrimental to the interests of the ANC and defend the policy
and programmes of the ANCWL and the ANC;

The Women's League is an
integral part of the African National Congress and is part of its
mobilising machinery.

The ANCWL shall receive an
annual budget, together with the supplementary grants for specific
projects and tasks from the office of the Treasurer General of the ANC.

It is very
clear from the above that the ANC WL is intended by the drafters of this
constitution to be a handmaiden of the ANC, without autonomy.

In the next
session, we will look at the Progressive Women’s Movement (PWM) and ask: Is the
PWM supposed to be a subsidiary, or junior partner, of the ANCWL, and therefore
of the ANC? Or is it a wider movement, open to all women, of which the ANCWL is
only one part? To what extent have the problems and tensions of the FEDSAW
period been solved, or have they not been solved? To what extent have those
problems re-appeared, in fact, and with greater virulence than before?

18 October 2012

We have seen, by working through the readings of Zetkin, Kollontai,
Luxemburg, Lenin, the Comintern and the Women’s Charter of the Federation of
South African Women (FEDSAW; otherwise FSAW), that the class context, and also
the South African liberation-movement context, makes the clear understanding of
women’s mass organisation very critical. Women’s mass organisation is
necessary, but it is not easy. The difficulties come mainly from within the
movement.

To sum up: Women are not a separate class, which can be
organised against men. Women are not exempt from class struggle, but are as
divided by class as men are, and divided into the same classes as men are. Yet
women, and working women in particular, do have a common basis for organisation
as a distinct and self-conscious mass.

Today’s text (see attached and the link below) is an excerpt
from Cheryl Walker’s 1982 book “Women and Resistance in South Africa”. It
concerns the position of FEDSAW in relation to the apartheid regime, and also in
relation to the African National Congress Women’s League (ANCWL), in the period
following FEDSAW’s founding in 1954.

The ANCWL had been founded in 1948; and the ANC was an
Africans-only organisation until the 1969 National Conference of the ANC
in Morogoro, Tanzania. There was therefore an objective need to organise
women on a wider basis than that of the ANCWL. They could have been organised
separately, on racial lines, but in fact they chose to organise on non-racial
lines.

Among the leaders were Ray Alexander, Dora Tamana, and Josie
Mphama.

As we noted, the 1954 formation of FEDSAW, intended as a
non-racial women’s movement in South Africa, and the simultaneous adoption
of the Women’s Charter, prefigured the Congress of the People and the adoption
of the Freedom Charter which happened in the following year, 1955.

All of that was to the good, but it is also clear from
Walker’s account that the relationship between FEDSAW and the ANCWL was
problematic in the 1950s. It is equally clear that very similar problems
continue, more than half a century later, to arise between, for example, the
ANCWL and the Progressive Women’s Movement (PWM) that was launched in August
2006. In the 1950s, and again in the 2000s, the question of whether to have
individual membership, or not, was at issue. Here is some of
what Walker has to say about this:

“There
were two alternatives. Either the FSAW could seek its own mass membership or it
could base itself on a federal form, acquiring its members indirectly through
each of its affiliated member organisations. The matter was not settled at the
inaugural conference. A draft constitution proposing the first alternative – a
mass, individual membership – was circulated but failed to win overall
approval. Ray Alexander, and later the NEC based in Cape Town, supported this
constitution, but Ida Mtwana and, it would seem, the ANCWL in the Transvaal,
wanted a federal structure.

“In
opposing Alexander, Mtwana spoke on behalf of the Transvaal ANCWL,
acting, apparently, on the instructions of the provincial ANC. Their main fear
was that, if the FSAW were constituted on the basis of an individual
membership, it would compete against the ANCWL to the detriment of the latter.
In taking this position, the ANC revealed a degree of ambivalence towards the
FSAW that it would never entirely overcome. While supporting and welcoming the
entry of women into the national liberation movement, it was anxious to retain
control over their activities – a control it could exercise effectively over
the Women’s League but not so successfully over an independent FSAW.

“At the
heart of the debate between these two alternatives there thus lay a matter of
central importance – the relationship between the FSAW and ANC; the
relationship between the women’s movement and the senior partner in the
national liberation movement. The ANC was adamant on the issue and finally,
reluctantly, the individual membership group yielded towards the end of 1954.
They conceded not because they had been convinced by the other group’s
arguments but because they realised that without the support of the ANC, the
women’s movement would be isolated from the Congress Alliance.”

14 October 2012

Any mass democratic organisation must have its Constitution.
In this course, we are advocating for mass organisation of women, either as
women in general or as working women. Such an organisation will have to have a
constitution.

Rather than enumerate what a Constitution needs to contain,
we here once again follow the rule of the Communist University, which is to use
a real book rather than use a “text book”.

In this case we use the South African Communist Party’s
Constitution. It is short, and it is complete with sufficient parts which, if
suitably adapted, could serve as the model constitution of many different kinds
of organisation, including mass organisations. It is exemplary in that way.

We can also note that in the SACP one of the guiding
Principles (clause 4.3) is:

“Organise, educate and lead women within the working class,
the poor and rural communities in pursuit of the aims of the SACP; and to raise
the consciousness of the working class and its allies around the integral and
oppressive nature of gender relations within South African capitalism.”

And also that one-third of the Central Committee is supposed
to be women.

12 October 2012

The title of the attached document, taken from a 1950 book
by Wal Hannington on organisation, is a first-class example of the
genderisation of a topic by careless or unconscious use of language.

“Mr Chairman” would seem to be a male. Of course, there is
nothing in the book that explicitly states that a Chairperson has to be male.

Game, set and match! Wal Hannington can be found
posthumously guilty in the court of Gender, and all his works can be condemned,
along with those of countless other writers, especially in the English
language, which is, or has in the past been “gendered” in a way that is quite
resilient and difficult to avoid. Avoiding “gendered” references of this kind
takes a will, and constant effort.

It would be a mistake to throw out Wal Hannington’s work,
because in practice it is quite essentially “gender-sensitive”. The book is
dedicated to making it possible for anyone to attend meetings without feeling
left out, put down, or patronised. It strongly opposes the use of the chair in
a patronising way towards the members of the meeting.

The book provides the weapons by which the ordinary members
of a meeting are able to intervene and assert themselves in all necessary ways,
so as to guide the chairperson, as much as to be guided by the chairperson.

The Chairperson is the main servant of the meeting, and not
the boss of the meeting, says Hannington.

One of the common complaints of feminists who would flee
from structure, is that formal meetings are oppressive. They can be, but the
remedy is not structurelessness. The remedy is to see how the structure can
work, and is well designed to work, in a way that promotes fairness and
democracy.

What is oppressive about meetings arises from ignorance of
the procedure and of the rules of debate. Wal Hannington (who was a major
communist leader in his lifetime) made time to create this work so as to help
do away with oppressive and submissive behaviour during meetings.

The attached document is a redaction off the most crucial
parts of Hannington’s book, as they relate to the most common types of meetings
such as Branch meetings of mass democratic organisations.

11 October 2012

As she tells us at the beginning of the attached document,
the first version of Jo Freeman’s “Tyranny of Structurelessness” was given as a
talk more than 40 years ago, in 1970.

Part of its instant appeal is that it states “the obvious” –
things that those of us with even a small amount of experience know very well
to be true. For example:

“...there is no such
thing as a structureless group.”

Not only is this obvious, but it is also part of scientific knowledge
of human society. Humans are social creatures, and live their lives in relation
with each other. These relationships always have structure, although the
structure of the relationships is constantly changing.

If, as Spinoza and Engels thought, freedom is “the
recognition of necessity”, then freedom of relationships, and within
relationships, will be greater if their structure is acknowledged, and not
denied.

If, as Gramsci thought, all social groups contain their
“organic intellectuals”, then some of these may be good and others bad. But the
remedy for bad intellectuals is not to pretend that there are no intellectuals.
They are there, whether people are conscious of them, or not.

What Jo Freeman shows is that “structurelessness”, as
applied in the Women’s Movement, became a screen behind which women who had
advantages of class privilege, derived from the generally class-divided society
outside, where able to manipulate the other, poorer and working-class women, so
as to preserve their hegemony or dictatorship within these feminist circles.

“For everyone to have
the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its
activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit,” says Freeman.

Explicit structure means open Rules of Debate, Procedure of
Meetings (“Standing Orders”) including notice of meetings, a Constitution,
listed membership, minutes, book-keeping, and election of leadership on a
periodical basis.

In South Africa, a “Progressive Women’s Movement” (PWM)
exists which has no formal structure. Its “Base Document” (not a constitution)
says that it is “Organic – not a formal structure”. In practice this means that
its decisions are taken by its sponsors, who fund its principal gatherings (so
far two in six years) and who maintain it from outside itself, which is done by
the ANC Women’s League.

The first, three-paragraph section of Jo Freeman’s essay,
called “Formal and Informal Structures”, is the best of the four sections. It
“says it all”. The nest three sections are more experiential and discursive.
The final section gives some advice on organisation, and one may have different
views about the details.

The main thing that organisation is essential for the
working-class women, and for the working class in general. Organise or starve!
is a good slogan.

In South Africa, the great age of organisation was from the
beginning of the 20th century and especially from the founding of
the ANC in 1912, up until 1990.

The organisations that still flourish were founded then. Of
them, the ANC and the SACP continue to grow, but COSATU is not growing at the
same rate, if at all.

In 2003 COSATU adopted its “2015 Plan”, which called for
four million members by the time of the 10th COSATU Congress, held
in 2009. In fact, the membership at that time had barely reached 2 million, and
it was very little changed by the time of the 11th COSATU Congress, which
took place three years later in September, 2012.

On the other hand, since 1990, a large number of NGOs have
been established, which, calling themselves “civil society”, or “social
movements”, hold themselves out as the new representatives of the masses.
Whereas they only represent their bourgeois funders and sponsors.

Internationally, the “Occupy” movement is not the first to
shoot up on the stony ground of “structurelessness”, only to die away even
faster.

What Jo Freeman said, addressing the Women’s Movement forty
years or more ago, today remains applicable to all of our activities, and not
just to the Women’s Movement.

Conversely, it is clear that much (but not all) of the
ideology of the Women’s Movement is only masquerading as feminism, whereas it
is actually imported from, and is no different from, the prevailing bourgeois
ideology of capitalist society. This is certainly the case with
“structurelessness”.

“Structurelessness” has nothing to do with feminism, and
everything to do with degenerate “post-modern”, anti-humanist bourgeois
philosophy in the service of Imperialism.

5 October 2012

The Freedom Charter was adopted by five organisations in the
Congress of the People on June 26th 1966, one and a half years after
the adoption of the Women’s Charter, seven years after the formation of the ANC
Women’s League, and twelve years after the admission of women to membership of
the ANC in 1943.

Without the prior admission of women to the ANC, the Freedom
Charter would have been unimaginable, or else would rightly have been taken as
a fraud.

Without mass organisation of the women in the ANC Women’s
League and in the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW), the Freedom
Charter would hardly have been possible.

The five Freedom Charter signatories were: SACOD, SAIC,
SACPO, SACTU and the ANC.

All of them were racially-defined except SACTU, the South
African Congress of Trade Unions, which was a federation of trade unions, and
non-racial, like . Clearly, and in the light of the content of the Freedom
Charter, the entire exercise amounted to a movement away from separation and
towards non-racialism.

What does the Freedom Charter say about women in particular?

that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people,
can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race,
sex or belief;

Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand
as a candidate for all bodies which make laws;

The rights of the people shall be the same, regardless of race,
colour or sex;

Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work;

The Freedom Charter does not:

mention Gender

mention Patriarchy

advocate Structurelessness

The Women’s Charter of 1954 also does not mention these
things.

All of the signatories of the Freedom Charter were men. Does
this invalidate the Freedom Charter? No, it does not.

4 October 2012

On 17 April 1954, fourteen months before the Freedom Charter was adopted in
Kliptown on 16 June 1955, the Federation of South African Women adopted the
Women’s Charter (attached, and linked below).

Following on from what we have read in the last three weeks
(from Zetkin, Kollontai,
Luxemburg, Lenin, and the Comintern), we can see the same thread
re-emerging several decades later here in South Africa, as for example in this
short passage from the Women’s Charter:

“We women do not form a society separate from the men.
There is only one society, and it is made up of both women and men. As women we
share the problems and anxieties of our men, and join hands with them to remove
social evils and obstacles to progress.”

The Women’s Charter was not directed against men; nor did it
hold out women as a separate class of people as compared to the men. It opposed
such a separation.

Thus it placed the question of women in the mainstream, and
then it went on to say:

“It is our intention to carry out a nation-wide programme
of education that will bring home to the men and women of all national groups
the realisation that freedom cannot be won for any one section or for the
people as a whole as long as we women are kept in bondage.”

It is very sad to read the following, from the women of 55
years ago, knowing that it is still as true today as it was then:

“We know what it is to keep family life going in
pondokkies and shanties, or in overcrowded one-room apartments. We know the
bitterness of children taken to lawless ways, of daughters becoming unmarried
mothers whilst still at school, of boys and girls growing up without education,
training or jobs at a living wage.”

On the question of forms of organisation of women, a matter
to which the CU will return tomorrow, the Women’s Charter as such has little to
say, except for the following items from the list of demands:

For
the removal of all laws that restrict free movement, that prevent or
hinder the right of free association and activity in democratic
organisations, and the right to participate in the work of these
organisations.

To
build and strengthen women's sections in the National Liberatory
movements, the organisation of women in trade unions, and through the
peoples' varied organisation.

To
co-operate with all other organisations that have similar aims
in South Africa as well as throughout the world.

The 1954 Women’s Charter was non-committal on the question of women’s
organisation. This was perhaps a sign that the matter was already controversial
within the liberation movement. The ANC Women’s League had been founded in
1948; we will see in later sessions that the ANC WL had its way in the 1950s
and again in the 1990s and in the 2000s, obstructing the growth of a general
women’s democratic mass movement.

The Women’s Charter of 1954 stands as a monument to South African
women’s determination to organise independently as women, but this is an
aspiration that has yet to be realised.